Origin

A Novel

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever". The evening's host is his friend and former student, Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old tech magnate whose dazzling inventions and audacious predictions have made him a controversial figure around the world. This evening is to be no exception: he claims he will reveal an astonishing scientific breakthrough to challenge the fundamentals of human existence. But Langdon and several hundred other guests are left reeling when the meticulously orchestrated evening is blown apart before Kirsch's precious discovery can be revealed. With his life under threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape, along with the museum's director, Ambra Vidal. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch's secret.

Opinion

From Library Staff

Langdon, last seen in 2013's Inferno, visits the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to hear a lecture by Edmond Kirsch, a former student of his who's now a "billionaire computer scientist, futurist, inventor, and entrepreneur." Kirsch promises in the buildup to his lecture to answer th... Read More »

From the critics

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Two questions proposed by Edmond Kirsch, Professor Robert Langdon's inventor, futurist, game theorist, and prominent atheist friend. He brings the world together to submit these questions, and ultimately provide a scientific answer to them. Unfortunately, some shady things go down and the presentation is cut short. What unravels afterward is typical author Dan Brown fare; suspense, intrigue, action, adventure, and a whole lot of heady dialogue.

If you've read or watched other Dan Brown offerings, you are aware that the "Robert Langdon" series deals heavily with themes of religion vs history/science. Origin brings this conversation to the direct center of the book. Brown's narrative is built around the mystery of what the character Edmond Kirsch was going to bring to light. Langdon goes on a journey to release the information, accompanied by the future queen of Spain... Seriously.

In my personal opinion, this book has a lot of elements that Brown executes on at a very high level. His drama, adventure, and suspense hold up against with the best. Although his prose is monotonous at times, he makes up for it in action and continuous plot momentum.

Where I feel like I have to give a small push back is the inherent nature of the book. Edmond Kirsch is a passionate atheist, bent on his discovery eliminating religion and making way for science to rule the land. Without divulging too much information, I feel like the climax of finding out what his discovery is doesn't give religion the "knock out punch" Kirsch hoped for. But, that's coming from some one with a pretty deep faith background.

More of the same, yet falls short of the level set by "Angels & Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code". Probably the easiest book of the five to get through in terms of readability, it manages to do just enough to keep you engaged and wondering about where the plot is heading. If you like the Langdon series, chances are you will enjoy this book.

Unlike other comments here I found the book completely engaging in spite of Dan using his typical 'formula' of Langdon and a woman both chasing and being chased. The addition of a visionary tech mogul who brings up the renown questions of where we came from and will head via AI is brilliant in itself. Having read all of his books, this one rates as high if not higher than his most popular "DaVinci Code". And Langdon as always proves his ability to decipher even the most challenging codes or symbols which in this book are shown graphically. Highly recommended.

Fun and ridiculous. Exactly what I ordered. I do really enjoy the bits of history and science splattered about these cartoonish adventures. I find myself googling images and looking up all sorts of fascinating things as I read Brown's books. However, in this one, the big reveal at the end, the discovery that Brown promised us would cause the collapse of all the world's religions and stun mankind was, well, not astonishing at all. The world's religions will all be quite fine at the end of all this silliness and we readers are left to question what all the fuss was about. I was entertained, though. Mission accomplished.

Unfortunately after reading Brown's 5th book, I still stand by "Angels & Demon's" and "The Da Vinci Code" being my two favorite Robert Langdon books. The book seemed to both drag in parts and yet have a plot that went by fast...I don't know how. A couple of the twists I figured out early on and the climax was a bit of a let down. Also, I initially liked this series because of it's focus on puzzles and symbology since that is Langdon's profession. This book didn't really have a lot of that and what it did seemed forced. A bit of a letdown.

This book is not one of his best works.
I found the plot dragged on and the ending wasn't as exciting (almost anticlimactic) as his other books. The "big secret" that Kirch was preparing to present to the world wasn't thought provoking at all.

Robert Langdon returns yet again in another art, architecture, and deep dark secrets preposterous plot novel by Dan Brown, this time set largely in Spain and playing around with the notion of where life began and where it's all going. The usual elements are all there: art history, philosophy, tech fascination, science versus religion, relentless henchmen, misunderstandings with the authorities, Langdon on the run with a beautiful woman in beautiful locations, and more than a few plotholes big enough to push the Guggenheim through.

Although Brown follows the same prescription of moderate, galvanizing action I loved the facts he included with his fiction. The museum air filtered meticulously of air particulates and oxidants then moistened.....The authors input on the future of evolving technology is interesting as well as the usual architecture of the locale. Edmond Kirsch was attempting to solve the mysteries of creation and destiny and we wait, a long time, to find out. I feel Brown brought us into a more forward thinking story than his others and found it an enjoyable read.

Quotes

Extensive quotes in goodreads. These were collected independently:
Historically, the most dangerous men on earth were men of God … especially when their gods became threatened.
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What was your famous quote? ‘At thirty-three years old, I am the same age as Christ when He performed His resurrection.’
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“I’ve read your books on Kabbala. I can’t say I understood them, but I’ve read them.”
“I have read your predictions on the future of mankind. I can’t say I agree with them, but I have read them.”
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The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, looked like something out of an alien hallucination—
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THE LARGEST SYNAGOGUE in Europe is located in Budapest on Dohány Street. Built in the Moorish style with massive twin spires ...
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“… when we learned that the tides were caused by lunar cycles, Poseidon was no longer necessary, and we banished him as a foolish myth of an unenlightened time.”

…if there is one thing I have learned in my long life, it is that faith always survives, even in the face of great hardship.
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“By the end of the eleventh century,” Edmond said, “the greatest intellectual exploration and discovery on earth was taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be ‘the philosophy of the devil.’
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“Where do we come from? Where are we going? ... Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God’s story is the One True Story.”

THE SZÉCHENYI CHAIN Bridge—one of eight bridges in Budapest—spans more than a thousand feet across the Danube. An emblem of the link between East and West, the bridge is considered one of the most beautiful in the world.
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“I’ve been taking confessions for fifty years. I know a lie when I hear one.”
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“… just remember the wise words of Disney’s Princess Elsa.” Langdon turned. “I’m sorry?” Ambra smiled softly. “Let it go.”

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But the old navy aphorism proved false over and over. The darkest hour is not just before the dawn, he sensed. The dawn is never coming.
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The roads to salvation are many. Forgiveness is not the only path.
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This ancient symbol, Garza knew, consisted of six letters, which, when put together, spelled a single word in Latin—a word that perfectly defined Franco’s self-image. Victor.
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Ruthless, violent, and uncompromising, Francisco Franco had risen to power with the military support of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
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“As the old adage goes: ‘Men plan, and God laughs.’”
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You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something!
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God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? —NIETZSCHE
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Apostasy had become a popular rallying cry for Spain’s liberal youth. Renounce the Church!
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‘Newton’s Third Law of Child Rearing: For every lunacy, there is an equal and opposite lunacy.’
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the eerie ghost town of El Torbiscal—a once prosperous farming village whose population had recently dwindled to zero.
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Casa Milà was one of Gaudí’s most famous buildings—a dazzlingly original “house” whose tiered facade and undulating stone balconies resembled an excavated mountain, sparking its now popular nickname “La Pedrera”—meaning “the stone quarry.”

For more than a century, Gaudí’s controversial Basílica de la Sagrada Família had been under construction, relying solely on private donations from the faithful. Criticized by traditionalists for its eerie organic shape and use of “biomimetic design,” the church was hailed by modernists for its structural fluidity and use of “hyperboloid” forms to reflect the natural world.
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He could still recall when “breaking news” was printed on paper and delivered to his doorstep the following morning.
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Any life-form with the technology to travel to earth would require no subterfuge or subtlety to dominate us instantaneously.”
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Personally, I believe that it would be perfectly feasible to seal these ‘seeds of life’ in radiation-proof, protective pods and shoot them into space with the intent of populating the cosmos in a kind of technology-assisted panspermia.
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“Any advanced life-form ... would not send a recipe for humans any more than they would send a recipe for chimpanzees.”

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.
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U.S. congressman Paul Broun say, ‘Evolution and the Big Bang are lies straight from the pit of hell.’
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To permit ignorance is to empower it. To do nothing as our leaders proclaim absurdities is a crime of complacency.
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The most self-righteous in life become the most fearful in death.
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Where do we come from? Where are we going? “We come from God!” Beña declared aloud. “And we go to God!”
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France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Poland, and more than fifty other countries had abandoned their crowns in the last century. Even in England there was a push for a referendum on ending the monarchy after the current queen died.
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Jesus being age thirty-three at the time of the Passion is a more likely explanation.
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… it seemed unlikely that a Spanish nun would admire a heterodox British poet. The entire story seemed like a stretch.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. —WINSTON CHURCHILL
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THE TALLEST CROSS in the world is in Spain. Erected on a mountaintop eight miles north of the monastery of El Escorial, the massive cement cross soars a bewildering five hundred feet in the air above a barren valley, where it can be seen from more than a hundred miles away.
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Life—had been invented in the 1970s by a British mathematician, John Conway.
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When life is dark, let your heart show you the way.
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T-shirt printed with the message—Ampersand phone home!—a playful allusion to the Spielberg movie about an extraterrestrial named “ET” who was trying to find his way home.

Darwin’s theory described the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest.”
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Computer simulations are really just virtual time machines.”
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Waves never crash onto beaches and deposit sand in the shape of a sand castle.
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… physicist Jeremy England. He was tall and very thin, with an unkempt beard and a quietly bemused smile. He stood before a blackboard filled with mathematical equations.
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Jeremy England’s theory ... was that the universe functioned with a singular directive. One goal. To spread energy. In the simplest terms, when the universe found areas of focused energy, it spread that energy out..
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To efficiently create chaos, Langdon realized, requires some order.
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If blazing sunlight hit a patch of fertile dirt, the physical laws of the earth would create a plant to help dissipate that energy. If deep-ocean sulfur vents created areas of boiling water, life would materialize in those locations and disseminate the energy.

“The truth is—we come from nowhere … and from everywhere. We come from the same laws of physics that create life across the cosmos. We are not special. We exist with or without God. We are the inevitable result of entropy. Life is not the point of the universe. Life is simply what the universe creates and reproduces in order to dissipate energy.”
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The Seventh Kingdom … TED Talk by digital-culture writer Kevin Kelly. Prophesied by some of the earliest science-fiction writers, this new kingdom of life came with a twist. It was a kingdom of nonliving species.
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“Half a billion years ago,” Edmond continued, “our planet experienced a sudden eruption of life—the Cambrian Explosion—
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“What you are seeing here is a rare evolutionary process known as obligate endosymbiosis,”
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‘The price of greatness … is responsibility.’”
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“May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies. May our compassion keep pace with our powers. And may love, not fear, be the engine of change.”